There’s a well-known saying in the world of sales and marketing that essentially everybody who works at a company works in sales. In that the whole organization is built on the premise of selling its products or services to customers, so every employee should be playing a part in making sure that happens effectively.

Which is why I’m always surprised within the clinical trials industry that not everybody who works in it is interested in recruiting and retaining patients.

These are, after all, the lifeblood of the industry – without whom, there would be no treatments needing to be developed.

If everyone in clinical trials adopted a similar attitude to the companies that understand all their employees work in sales, and paid more attention to the issues of getting patients into and successfully completing trials, there would surely be a move in a positive direction toward alleviating the problems we’re all too familiar with.